The Fortunetellers
by Freida Right
Summary: Ash and the gang are in a hurry trying to find the pokemart. While searching, they happen upon a strange woman who claims to read fortunes. Will the gang take her offer? Is it just Team Rocket again? Find out inside! Oneshot.


Ash pushed the door open and then realized that he'd made a mistake.

"Oops; I thought this was the pokemart. The roof was blue and I thought…" he began apologizing to his friends behind him.

"It _is_ a bit unusual for other buildings to have blue roofs," May pointed out. "I think there's a regulation about having too many blue-roofed buildings in a city or something. It's supposed to help trainers in a hurry, I think."

"Well, anyways, let's go back and find the pokemart so we can get going," Brock suggested.

Everyone was about to turn and follow him away, but someone called after them:

"Wait! Come back! Would you like to hear your fortunes?"

Naturally, the offer intrigued them all. They went back to the door and Ash pushed it back open, once again without stopping to wonder if it was just another scam ala Team Rocket.

The room was pretty dark; there was a lamp and a ceiling light, but they were both turned off. From the look of things, they appeared to be in someone's living room; the couch and TV nearby were dead give-aways. In front of them was a hallway; beside it was a countertop that separated the kitchen from the living room. On the countertop rested the one source of light in the area; it looked like a round glass ball and it omitted a purplish-pink light.

And beside the light source stood a young lady and a younger boy.

She had dark hair; whether it was brown, black or some other color, they weren't sure; the light made it difficult to tell. Her companion had lighter hair; in the bright light it looked orange. All four of their eyes gleamed, beady and black in the light. They stood on either side if the glass orb, smiling pleasantly if not manically at their visitors.

"Come in! Come in; we won't bite," the fortuneteller chided, beckoning the pokemon trainers into her house. The boy nodded a bit too eagerly, as if he did, indeed, plan to gobble them up once they were within touching distance.

The kids were all having doubts, but Ash's pikachu darted inside, overly curious. It left them (at least Ash) no choice but to go inside.

"Wait! Pikachu, come back!" Ash called after him, but Pikachu ignored his trainer. He jumped up on the counter and observed the glowing orb with a rodent-like interest that was somewhat unusual for the strangely intelligent creature, but becoming of his race.

_That's the type of behavior that's gotten us into Legendary Pokemon encounters before,_ Brock thought nervously, remembering the many Legendary Pokemon they had seen over the years and how curiosity had usually contributed to the encounters.

Pikachu's antics were just as well, as far as May and her much younger brother, Max, were concerned: this whole fortune-telling offer sounded intriguing.

"Can you _really_ read our fortunes?" Max asked excitedly.

"'Cause I've always wanted to see who I'm gonna marry," May added.

"You know, I've wondered about that too," Ash admitted.

"They can tell us things like that?" Brock realized, now very interested.

"Why certainly," the woman assured them. "Come on in and I'll get started."

Pikachu turned to everyone and voiced his own approval (apparently, it was not Team Rocket at work again, or they would have jumped out, grabbed him, recited their slogan, and run off by now).

So, without another moment's hesitation, the four kids crowded through the door and over to the fortune-teller and her glowing crystal ball.

"Shall we start with you, young man?" she said in Ash's general direction. "Come on, come on; it won't take much on your part. Lay your hand on my crystal ball—that's right, just like that," she directed. She put her hand over his and closed her eyes.

The inside of the ball had been cloudy and swirling with colorful smoke; the smoke suddenly began to clear, but all that Ash could make out was some vague shapes and splashes of color.

"I see…. I see….. There you are… you are dressed in a black suit, and standing in a church…" the fortune-teller said.

"Guess you're getting married," the red-headed boy said.

"Quiet, you," the fortune-teller ordered and went back to her scrying.

"I also see… a woman in a white dress carrying a bouquet of water-lilies. She has very short red hair… she's wearing it in a pony-tail on the side of her head—she looks _terrible_—"

"That sounds like _Misty_!" Ash cried in alarm.

"Yes… I am picking up something like that about her name…" the fortune-teller confirmed. "Names are a bit hard to make out; I'm sorry," she apologized.

Ash decided that he'd heard enough and stepped back.

"Me next! Me next!" Brock insisted, jumping up and down and waving his hand in the air like a kindergartener.

_He looks like a kindergartener,_ May thought, feeling slightly embarrassed for Brock's antics.

Despite how anyone else felt about his wild behavior, the fortune-teller seemed very amused.

"Certainly you may go next. Come on over. Place your hand on the orb and relax."

Brock did as he was told (anything to find out if he'd ever _actually_ find a girlfriend).

"I see… I see…….. There you are, in a black suit, standing in a church—"

"I'm _really_ getting married!!" Brock whooped.

"Calm down! I can't concentrate when you yell like that," the fortune-teller scolded.

"I can see a pretty young lady in a white dress with a bouquet of roses walking toward you."

"What's her name?" Brock asked, struggling to contain himself.

"Um, her name is…" the fortune-teller said, concentrating hard. "Her name is… Free…

Too… Free-To-Write?! What kind of a stupid name is that?!" she demanded.

"It's the name of an _angel_…"

"Oh cut that out," May ordered, pushing Brock out of the way. "My turn!"

"Ah, yes. Shall we?"

"Yes.

"……..I see…. You, in a white dress with a bouquet of daisies. In front of you there is a boy with red hair and freckles…. I think….. his name is………….."

"Yes??"

"…….I can't make it out. It's either Benjamin Ivy or Scott Rochester; that's the best I can do."

"So there's absolutely _no_ chance that it's _him_?" May asked, pointing to where Ash was messing around with an elaborate (and fragile—looking) mural on the wall.

"Nope. None at all."

"How about me? What's my fortune?" Max asked, poking his head over the counter.

"I can't tell you; it's nearly impossible to see the fortunes of someone so young."

"Aw man! I never the get cool stuff!" Max complained.

"Is that everybody?" Ash asked everyone.

May and Max nodded. Brock was too busy twirling around in the living room to hear the question.

"Let's go then; we've got places we need to be," Ash reminded his friends.

"Pi-KA-chu!" Pikachu added.

"Yeah, I guess we should be going," May admitted, heading toward the door. "Thank you for reading our fortunes," she called back to the fortune-teller.

"Yeah, bye!" the boys all chorused (except for Brock, who was still twirling, but following his companions out of the door).

The fortune-teller and her assistant waved good-bye to their customers until the door shut and the sound of their footsteps faded away.

Once the footsteps had stopped, they both burst out laughing and didn't stop for a full three minutes.

"I guess you forgot to tell them that you can't see _real_ fortunes at all?" the assistant said, clicking off the mutli-colored flashlights he'd been hiding under the counter. He began dismantling the glass ball, which was really just an old Christmas ornament with some smoke and a few bits of broken glass inside. Beneath it there was a hole in the counter where he shined the light up through it, making the light refract and swirl around in the smoke. All and all, the effect was very real and very convincing to everyone who came in.

"Yeah! Heehee; what a bunch of suckers!" The fortune-teller confirmed, walking across the room and turning on the lights. Now that they were on, you could see that she wasn't _really_ a woman. In fact, she was no older than the trainers she had just "helped". Her assistant was probably a few years younger than she.

"That one kid sounded like he knew the chick I was describing," she said. "Do you think it was a coincidence?"

"I thought you were just describing that girl who came in yesterday," the assistant answered. "Ya know, the one with the togepi? Looking for a job in a water-type gym?"

"I was. Think they know her somehow?" the girl wondered.

"Hmmm…" they chorused.

By the way, a block or so away by now, the four trainers had just found the poke-mart and walked inside. There they actually _had_ run into Misty and togepi, who were buying groceries, and good times were being had by all. No one mentioned the fortune-teller at all during the course of the encounter.

"Hey!" the fortune-teller said, changing the subject, "did you get my joke? About that hyper kid marrying _me_ and that girl marrying _you_? Ha! I love it when they fall for things like that!" the girl cackled.

"You oughta charge for this, Freida," the assistant suggested. "Ask 'em for money up front and then scam 'em—just out and out scam 'em! We'd be rich!"

"Now now, Ben, that's not very nice. We're not trying to make money: we just want to waste the time of people in a hurry. That's all," Freida pointed out.

"But I want _more_ money!" Ben insisted.

"We don't need more money, little brother. You've just gotten greedy."

pout

"Now then, why don't we go and check to see if anyone's reviewed that Final Fantasy IV fic I posted yesterday, yet, hm?"

"Alright, I guess," Ben agreed gloomily.

"If no one's reviewed yet, we can go see if they've got a new Zatch Bell episode on , okay?" Freida tempted.

"I'll go boot up the computer; you go pop the popcorn!" Ben cried as he dashed to the computer room.

"Aha! That's the spirit!" Freida cheered and went to get the popcorn out of the cabinet.

_Teehee… Suckahs! I'm so smart! _)

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This was a thing that my brother and I came up with, like, a year ago. I promised myself that I'd write it, but I only finished it recently. I wrote it at school back in September, so I had quite an adventure trying to get it to my hard drive. --0 Whew, am I glad _that's_ over…

R&R, if you please. I really _did_ post a new FFIV fic the other day (not surprising to some, I'd imagine), so checkeeout. Muchos gracias, senores y senioritas!


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